Last month, Trump told the Washington football team to bring back their old, racist mascot: the dictionary defined racial slur the R—skins. As leverage, the president is threatening to block the team's plan to build a new stadium. The Washington football team changed its name in 2020 during national protests against police violence and after decades of Native-led activism. Trump also called on the Cleveland Guardians to return to their former name the “Cleveland Indians”, arguing in a public statement the teams dropped their controversial names to “pander to the Woke Left”.
Professional teams are not the only place Trump is weighing in.
In April, Trump’s Department of Education launched an investigation into the state of New York after it threatened to withhold funding from a Massapequa school for retaining their mascot “the Chiefs”. New York first banned the use of Native-themed mascots in 2001, and in 2022 announced that any schools refusing to comply would face penalties, including the loss of state aid. The Long Island school refused to comply. School leaders are now asking Trump to issue an Executive Order protecting all Native mascots in schools. Nationwide, over 1,900 schools still have Native mascots according to a 2023 survey by the National Congress of American Indians. The 10 most common mascots for universities and schools are seven animals, a knight, and two Native mascots–the Warriors and the Indians.
As Trump reignites the mascot debate, it’s important to understand what it is really about. Most often, the debate is framed as whether or not Native Americans are offended by the Chiefs, the R—skins, the tomahawk chop or what have you. But the real issue–the reason these mascots are still in use–has nothing to do with how Native people feel. The mascots are still around because they make white people feel better about being white.
Native people are offended and harmed by racist mascots
First things first, the majority of Native people are offended by cartoonish versions of themselves on sports jerseys and stadiums of white people chanting pretend Native songs. This simple truth has been buried by deeply flawed opinion polls conducted and published by the Washington Post.
When their city’s football team still used a dictionary-defined racial slur, the Washington Post purported to conduct a nationwide opinion poll of Native Americans about the team’s name. Somewhat shockingly, the paper reported a large majority–9 out of 10–Native Americans were fine with the R–skins name. Only 9% of those surveyed by the Post found the mascot offensive. The poll seemed to shut down the debate: Native Americans aren’t offended so why should anyone else be? The only problem being, due to the poll’s methodology, most of the people they talked to weren’t actually Native.
The Washington Post’s most recent poll in 2016 asked 504 Native individuals across the United States a list of questions. To determine whether or not the person on the other end of the line was Native, the pollsters simply asked. This means, they relied on what's called self-identification. For Native Americans, self-identification is unreliable. Unfortunately, a growing number of white people falsely claim to be Native American. These “pretendians” are quickly starting to outnumber actual Native people. On the last U.S. census three times as many people claimed to be Cherokee as are enrolled in the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes. When Native advocates looked under the hood of that 2016 Washington Post poll, they found the majority of respondents had no tribal affiliation and only about a third were actually enrolled. People who falsely claim to be Native are already comfortable appropriating not only Native culture but our very identities. Why would they be offended by a mascot?
Scientific polling led by Native researchers–most notably Dr. Stephanie Fryberg (Tulalip)--found only 38% of Native Americans were not offended by the R–skins name. Native people who were enrolled in a tribe, active in their community and cultural practices, and primarily identified as Native were more likely to be offended by the mascot. Large majorities of Native people are offended by other common controversies within the mascot debate, like white people wearing head dresses and the tomahawk chop.
For Native advocates, opposing mascots was never about the results of an opinion poll. Decades of research has shown mascots harm the self-esteem and mental well-being of Native youth.
In several studies, researchers exposed Native youth to images of mascots. Researchers then asked the young people questions about themselves, their community, and their future. The youth who were exposed to racist mascots (compared to groups who were shown positive images of Native people or nothing) showed decreased self esteem, feelings of community worth (i.e. being proud to be Native), and hope for what they could be in the future. Some studies have found exposure to mascots increases depression and suicidal ideation in Native youth. The take away is clear: mascots harm the self esteem and mental health of Native youth,. This documented harm is why not only prominent Native groups but also the American Psychological Association oppose Native mascots in sports.
Mascots make white people feel better about being white
The mascot debate was originally framed as “are Natives offended by the R-skins name” by the team’s owner, the Post, and other people defending the indefensible: a dictionary-defined racial slur. It’s a frame meant to take those doing the harm out of the picture. If instead of asking, “Are Native people offended by mascots?” we ask, “Why do white people like them so much?” we start a very different conversation.
Scientific researchers have also exposed white people to mascots and then measured the participants’ feelings towards Native Americans and themselves. The results are telling. Most often in our culture, racism is framed as a conscious prejudice people hold against marginalized groups. But racism is a powerful force in our country that operates on both the conscious and unconscious mind. Mascots affect people–whether or not they are aware of those effects.
Mascots change how white people view Native Americans. After being shown images of mascots, white people are more likely to agree with the stereotype that Native Americans are “war-like”. This holds true when the white participants claim the mascots “honor” Native Americans. People who live in a city with a racist Native-themed mascot are more likely to implicitly stereotype Native people as savage. In general, people who support and defend Native mascots are more likely to hold negative and stereotypical views of actual Native people.
What is even more interesting is how the mascots made white people feel about themselves. European Americans exposed to racist mascots in research studies reported a boost in self-esteem. Seeing racist mascots made white people feel better about themselves. The mascots also made participants feel more warmth towards other white people. In one study white participants were asked to look at another white person wearing a T-shirt. Some of the shirts had nothing on them, others the fighting Irish logo, others Native mascots. When research participants saw a white person wearing a Native mascot across their chest, they identified more with that person–and even liked them more. Notably, when sports teams use racist mascots, their merchandise sells better.
We need to widen our understanding of the role these mascots play in our country. The frame that the mascots are wrong because they harm Native people is too narrow. Because mascots do something else that is equally, if not more, dangerous: they affirm and perpetuate white supremacy. In simple terms, these mascots make white people feel better about themselves and other white people when together they dehumanize a racial minority. At a time when white supremacy and extremism is on the rise, millions of sports fans and school children doing this together should cause alarm.
Support for mascots–and other contested symbols like Columbus–strongly correlates with how people feel about being American. People who are proud of being American and for whom nationalism is a central part of their identity are more likely to support Columbus Day and mascots like the Chiefs and the R—skins. These folks tend to hold the belief that America is the best democracy in the world. It is hard to square that pride with the reality of what our government did to Native Americans. The land on which our country is built already belonged to millions of people and hundreds of Indigenous nations. To take that land, our government put tribal citizens in concentration camps, systematically used starvation as a tool of war, stole generations of Indigenous children, and engaged in campaigns of mass slaughter. How can we be the greatest democracy in history if we also committed genocide? One way to square our government’s crimes with a belief in its greatness is to dehumanize the victims. A cartoon of a brown head with a pointed nose and a few feathers doesn’t deserve human rights. That cartoon isn’t human.
Mascots are not a new phenomenon; they are rooted in one of the oldest American traditions: white people playing Indian. From colonists dressing up like Mohawks to throw tea in the Boston Harbor to Boy Scouts, summer camp, and New Age societies white Americans have been “playing Indian“, as Dakota historian Philip Deloria calls it, since the dawn of our republic. Mascots are just one present-day iteration. The feathers white people put in their hair, the made-up rituals they perform, and the mascots they cheer for have had little to do with actual Native people. As Deloria puts it, these images reveal more about the people who make them than they do Native Americans. While all this playing Indian may feel light–and at times even ridiculous–it plays a heavy role in our society. The historic, romanticized, noble savage continues to be held up in American culture in contrast to the erasure and degradation of actual living Native peoples. What the public is taught to believe is that all the real Indians are dead and Americans are the rightful inheritors of their culture and land.
For all of his flaws, Trump is very skilled at wielding symbols for attention and power. Trump has inserted himself into the mascot debate not out of disrespect for Native Americans, but because he understands what these mascots mean to his base. Mascots fold into Trump’s version of a great-again America where the Native figures deserving of honor and celebration are not real, human, or even alive.
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This is Karen Coody Coper. Trump is going to make Smithsonian museums change their cultural information and I worry that eventually he will attack American Indians and dismiss the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He will do everything to assault our leaders and our cultures and would love to make us disappear. He holds a grudge because a few decades ago the Pequot tribe succeeded in having a casino when Trump was expecting to build one in the state... and Trump was shut out. Another small state did the same thing. Trump kept saying, "They don't look like Indians to me." He definitely will target us before he finishes his presidency.
I never paid much attention to sports growing up, but when I moved to the DC Metro area in ‘98 the onslaught of the Washington Football team mascot was intense. I was kind of surprised when I was arguing against the mascot and one friend who grew up as part of a nation in Montana on a reservation said that she and her family were all Washington football fans and that boggled my mind. But I know not all native peoples are a monolith. As a white kid whose mom would call us “Indians” when we were being too rowdy, it made me intensely uncomfortable to see it everywhere and I was so glad when they finally changed the mascot and team name around the time we moved away. I hope this is just 47 bluster and a distraction attempt that just rolls over, and the Commanders and Guardians stay as they are. And the KC team considers a change too, even if the merch does sell. Disappointing but not surprising, I guess.